Okay, we get what Bill Nye was trying to do. It's a respectable sentiment, anyway. But to call that dog-and-pony show a "debate" is an abuse of that word. There is no debate, there is science and not-science. There is the scientific method, and testable hypotheses, measured against the immovable derp of raw belief, and faith unsupported by evidence or reliable outcomes.
The nincompoopery of "intelligent design" was a frequent topic in this blog back in the day, when it infested school districts, eventually getting dumped unceremoniously on its ass by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The problem was not that science and religion were at some unbridgeable impasse; the problem was that "intelligent design" was neither of those things -- it was politics, and as such did a disservice to science and religion.
Now, this Ken Ham strain of "creationism" isn't even politics -- it's just marketing, in this case, marketed as some sort of sensible dialogue between equally-matched (if ideologically opposed) interlocutors. The reality of it is that it barely qualified as Firing Line for morons.
To paraphrase one of the Slate commentator's points, religion has more to lose by the absence or dismissal of a Prime Mover, than science has to lose by the (somehow) irrefutable proof of the existence of the divine hand. Were such a Hand to be demonstrated, it would be in the form of universal laws to be tested and verified.
Conversely, if it could be disproven (again, somehow), it not invalidate creationists' barrage of whoppers and claptrap in the fields of archaeology, geology, and many other sciences, it would completely undermine their moral cornerstones, the ones they routinely infest the political world with. After all, without the celestial graybeard judging, testing, and (occasionally) rescuing us, the many biblical prohibitions and commands would be without merit. Obviously, it would still be wrong and immoral to (for example) kill, steal, and lie, but the obsession with, say, homosexuals would lose overnight what remaining ground it still clings to.
The problem is that implying intellectual discourse -- on the creationists' home turf, no less -- legitimizes to that claque what can only be seen with honest eyes as incoherent jabber, a tangle of fables that, in its attempt to heave itself into discussions of science, only appears more and more illegitimate.
This Flintstones level of interpreting the historical past just holds us back further, impedes our collective ability to regain our footing as scientific leaders, casts us as the slow kid in the classroom of industrialized nations. The idea that hard-pressed taxpayers and school districts are supposed to waste scarce resources teaching this guff in science class would be funny, if only they weren't so dead serious about it.
The nincompoopery of "intelligent design" was a frequent topic in this blog back in the day, when it infested school districts, eventually getting dumped unceremoniously on its ass by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The problem was not that science and religion were at some unbridgeable impasse; the problem was that "intelligent design" was neither of those things -- it was politics, and as such did a disservice to science and religion.
Now, this Ken Ham strain of "creationism" isn't even politics -- it's just marketing, in this case, marketed as some sort of sensible dialogue between equally-matched (if ideologically opposed) interlocutors. The reality of it is that it barely qualified as Firing Line for morons.
To paraphrase one of the Slate commentator's points, religion has more to lose by the absence or dismissal of a Prime Mover, than science has to lose by the (somehow) irrefutable proof of the existence of the divine hand. Were such a Hand to be demonstrated, it would be in the form of universal laws to be tested and verified.
Conversely, if it could be disproven (again, somehow), it not invalidate creationists' barrage of whoppers and claptrap in the fields of archaeology, geology, and many other sciences, it would completely undermine their moral cornerstones, the ones they routinely infest the political world with. After all, without the celestial graybeard judging, testing, and (occasionally) rescuing us, the many biblical prohibitions and commands would be without merit. Obviously, it would still be wrong and immoral to (for example) kill, steal, and lie, but the obsession with, say, homosexuals would lose overnight what remaining ground it still clings to.
The problem is that implying intellectual discourse -- on the creationists' home turf, no less -- legitimizes to that claque what can only be seen with honest eyes as incoherent jabber, a tangle of fables that, in its attempt to heave itself into discussions of science, only appears more and more illegitimate.
This Flintstones level of interpreting the historical past just holds us back further, impedes our collective ability to regain our footing as scientific leaders, casts us as the slow kid in the classroom of industrialized nations. The idea that hard-pressed taxpayers and school districts are supposed to waste scarce resources teaching this guff in science class would be funny, if only they weren't so dead serious about it.
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